i remember an article that i think was in EC&M a couple of years ago:
A new house caught fire and was blamed as electrical. The homeowner filed a lawsuit against the EC, and hired an EE to investigate the cause. The EE determined the cause was at an LB below the service entering the basement. The EE said there was a short at the LB and ignited a fire. The electrical contractor hired an a private fire investigator. That investigator found signs of fire accelerants, and testing confirmed that the floors had been coated in gasoline and lit. The homeowner went to jail.
Also, I've been on a couple of burn jobs, one electrical and one was a kitchen fire. In the electrical fire, I noticed the conductors were very brittle at the ignition point, and the heat damage gradually ended past the point of ignition. In the kitchen fire, the burning was central to one area, and the burn marks stopped suddenly. The conductors were not brittle either. Not sure if it always happens that way, but that was my observation.
